One of the great paradox's of queer church history is that a period of extreme persecution of "sodomites" by the Inquisition, directly at their own hands or indirectly by secular authorities at their instigation, largely coincided with a remarkable series of popes who had sex with men, who protected family and friends who did so, or spent vast sums commissioning major works of homoerotic art. Of these, the most obvious and best known of these is Michelangelo's magnificent frescoes for then Sistine Chapel, which remains one of the must see attractions for any tourist visiting Rome. (Pope Paul III who commissioned these works for the chapel, also commissioned an obviously homoerotic theme, the Rape of Ganymede, for his bedroom.)

James Alison is another important theologian for gay men, although he described himself not as a "gay theologian", but as a theologian who writes from a gay (male) perspective. He was formerly a Dominican priest, who like Fr John McNeill,, was forced out of the priesthood for daring to speak honestly, in his case about gay priests. He has since created a new career as an independent theologian, writing, speaking and leading workshops. His work is characterised by a continuous ability to celebrate the joy of being gay and Catholic,and for a particular attention to the difficulties of young people on first coming out.

This is the focus of this piece, published at his website:

Navigating uncharted waters: the gift of faith and growing up LGBT

The first point which I’d like to make, in a sense, is a big sigh of relief. And the sigh of relief is as follows: if faith were an ideology, and gay were a pathology, how easy this conference would be! Because if faith were an ideology, it would merely say “nyet” to us, and if being gay were a pathology, then we would merely go “oh poor little me”; and the matter would be over. Unfortunately for people who try to present things in the way that makes faith into an ideology, and being LGBT into a pathology, this world has collapsed. The world in which faith is an ideology, and ‘LGBT’ is a pathology, has collapsed. Our ability to have survived into what might pass as adulthood in some of our cases, seems to have borne witness to this. We’re no longer run by the world in which faith is an ideology, and being LGBT is a pathology. But getting out of some of the tracks of thinking, to which many of us have got used, which did rather regard it as though we were perpetually stuck between those two, has taken time.

So what I want us to do today is to start in the morning by looking forward, and looking back, a little bit. This is, remember, with a view to being able to think more creatively this afternoon. So I’m not asking you to look back for reasons of nostalgia – though that can be important – but it’s because a healthy looking back is what empowers a looking forward. This is one of the things which is very important for us. We are all autobiographical animals – we tell stories. And our stories are not based on fixed memories from the past, read towards us; all our stories are told from where we are now, looking backwards. And what I think inspires us to be able to think about these stories, is the gift of hope. And I want to make – this is my second point: the difference between hope and optimism. Often the two are confused. Optimism is, if you like, a strategic matter: I try and examine what the forces in play are, in the society in which I live, or in the church, or whatever, and I ask myself, ‘am I optimistic or am I pessimistic?’. But this proposes that, or this imagines that, one is in a battle with something, on one’s own level, and one is optimistic or pessimistic depending on who gets elected pope, what the bishop is like, etc etc – things like this. Hope is something entirely different. Hope is a gift, given us by Someone Else, who s pulling us out of where we are, into something bigger. Hope is actually compatible with a great deal of non-optimism, with quite a sanguine assessment of the reality of our situation. But hope is a theological virtue, a gift – we’re going to be looking at how faith is a gift in just a second – it presupposes Someone Else, to wit, God, pulling us out of a situation, and opening us up into something bigger. It’s that that I want to focus on, because it’s in the degree to which we are able to imagine someone else doing that for us, that we are able to retell our stories, in more open, more critical, more relaxed ways, in such a way that they will open our trajectories out to open and more creative futures. Does that make sense? [pause] Good.

Yes, really - in a manner of speaking. Browsing through the Catechism section on sexuality, which you will find under the sixth commandment, I was struck by two passages in particular:

"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity." (2333)

and

"Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another" (2337)

Of course, that it is not at all what the Vatican means - the rest of the passage assumes that this can only be done by violating your identity in a heterosexual relationship, which we know from the experts in social science, from the testimony of others, and and from personal experience, is a violation of our identites, not an acceptance. But then, the Vatican has never been noted for freedom from contradiction.

There are more compelling reasons though, than the Vatican's mixed messages for coming out, and indeed for coming out in church. For "coming Out Day", I want to look instead at some of these.

Rereeading Elisabeth Stuart's "Gay & Lesbian Theologies", I was struck by the realisation that she puts the start of the formal development of gay & lesbian theology to the early 1970's. the first notable text she discusses is Loving Women/Loving Men (eds Sally Gearhard and William Johnson), published as long ago as 1974 -fully 35 years ago this year, and "Towards a Theology of Gay Liberation", edited by Malcolm Marcourt.

An essential aspect of this early thinking takes its cue from Paul Tillich, and his notion of "the courage to be". In these terms, it is important to recognise our own experience.

Johnson accuses the church of being over concerned with "intellectual theology", and under concerned with the grounding of theology in experience. It is therefore vital that gay people come out, articulate their experience and reflect theologically upon it, for "we who are gay know the validity of our experience, particularly the experience of our love. That love calls us out of ourselves and enables us to respond to the other. Through our experience we experience the presence of God...........

For Johnson, gay liberation is vital for the liberation of the Church to enable it to better incarnate the Gospel. The essay ends with a call to all gay men in the Church to come out, to ensure that liberation takes place." (Emphasis added.)

Previously, I have looked at Richard Cleaver's view that coming out is "Wrestling with the Divine" (Know My Name), and Daniel Helminiak's that is a "Spiritual Experience" (Sex and the Sacred). John McNeill, former Jesuit theologian and psychotherapist, makes similar points in "Sex as God Intended". Today, I want to look at the ideas of Chris Glaser, who in a full length book presents his view of "Coming Out as Sacrament". Glaser is one of those treasured writers on gay religion of whom it can said, as with James Alison, Daniel Helminiak and JohnMcNeill, that everything they write is worth reading, and accessible even to non specialists. Glaser writes from a backgroound in the Baptist and Presbyterian faiths, but as a Catholic I find this helpful, in broadening my perspective, rather than getting ini the way of his argument. The starting point for this book was some reflection on the importance of the idea of sacrament to lGBT people, who are so often denied access to the sacraments by mainstream churches. Talking to a close friend (sympathetic, but not LGBT), this is how his thinking went:

"Having visited our Wednesday night Bible study, she told me that what impressed her most deeply, what she thougth was our sacrament as gay people, was our "ability to be vulnerable with one another" - in other words, to xperience true communion by offering our true selves. As Christ offers himself in vulnerability, so we offer ourselves, despite the risks. Being open and vulnerable may be preceivesd as weakness, but in reality it demonstrates our strength. By sharing our "brokenness" - how we are sacrificially cut off from the rest of Christ's Body - we offer a renewed opportunity of Communion, among ourselves and within the Church as the Body of Christ."

Later in the opening chapter, he carefully notes the ways in which coming out has deep affinity with not just one, but each, of the traditional seven sacraments of the broader Christian community. Above all, however, he says there is one where there is an extra special affinity: the sacrament of communion is intrinsic to coming out - it is hardly possible to come out entirely in private.

Coming out in public is important for one's own mental health, and also for one's spiritual being. Doing so in the Church cam help the Church to recognise and proclaim the true Gospel message. If you possibly can, do it: quite literally, for the love of God.

One of the more striking things about all of the ink that has been spilled over California’s now- infamous Proposition 8, and its long legal aftermath, is the almost reflexive assumption on all sides that marriage, somehow, is a norm, a desirable norm. And so the argument swiftly becomes an argument about normalcy: about who is normal; and abut who may be privileged to participate in normalizing social institutions like marriage.

There is today a pervasive assumption about the normalcy and automatically privileged status for marriage, especially in the Church. But as Stephen Schloesser has clearly shown, in the article I summarised here this morning, this privileged status was given by the church only in the twelfth century - and was then more about property rights than about the importance of the family, which is the usual reason given today. It has nothing to do with the early church, which discouraged children and saw marriage only as a necessary evil to provide a licit for men's undesirable sexual urges, or with the Gospels. Ruprecht reminds us that Jesus was single. (We also know that he encouraged his disciples to leave families behind, to follow him.)

In Mexico, Cardinal Norberto Rivera has attacked the Supreme Court ruling that upheld same sex marriage in Mexico City, calling it "evil". It is not surprising that a Catholic bishop should oppose marriage equality, and while I sharply disagree with him, I must respect his right to express an opinion. He also says it is wrong to go against Christian doctrine that recognizes only marriages between a man and a woman. Again, barring a quibble or two about the effect of disagreement in conscience, even as we disagree with this, it is clear that this is orthodox Catholic teaching.

However, in invoking Christ himself, he goes way too far.

He called same-sex unions "inherently immoral," saying they "distort the nature of marriage raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament."

This is sheer garbage.

Not-a-"traditional"-marriage. Giulio Rosati (1858-1917)

I am not aware of any Gospel passage that endorses marriage as been between one man and one woman. Can any reader point to me one? Christ most certainly did not raise marriage to the dignity of a sacrament - not even the institutional church did that, until the twelfth century, after half its history had passed. Exploring this history has proven fascinating.

Compare the first two accounts I found. This is Wikipedia:

.....first-century Christians placed less value on the family but rather saw celibacy and freedom from family ties as a preferable state. Paul had suggested that marriage be used only as a last resort by those Christians that found it too difficult to remain chaste.[2]Augustine believed that marriage was a sacrament, because it was a symbol used by Paul to express Christ's love of the Church. Despite this, for the Fathers of the Church with their profound hostility to sex, marriage could not be a true and valuable Christian vocation. Jerome wrote: "It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil" (Letter 22). Tertullian argued that marriage "consists essentially in fornication" (An Exhortation to Chastity") Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage said that the first commandment given to men was to increase and multiply, but now that the earth was full there was no need to continue this process of multiplication. Augustine was clear that if everybody stopped marrying and having children that would be an admirable thing; it would mean that the Kingdom of God would return all the sooner and the world would come to an end.This negative view of marriage was reflected in the lack of interest shown by the Church authorities. Although the Church quickly produced liturgies to celebrate Baptismand the Eucharist, no special ceremonial was devised to celebrate Christian marriage, nor was it considered important for couples to have their nuptials blessed by a priest. People could marry by mutual agreement in the presence of witnesses. This system, known as Spousals, persisted after the Reformation. At first the old Roman pagan rite was used by Christians, although modified superficially. The first detailed account of a Christian wedding in the West dates from the 9th century and was identical to the old nuptial service of Ancient Rome.[3]

There are obvious difficulties with relying on Wikipedia as a source - but it does at least provide us with references to substantiate its claims. Now look at the Catholic Encyclopedia:

This can do no more than quote the council of Trent, which claims that the sacramental view of marriage has "always" been taught - totally disregarding the verdicts of church fathers such as Tertullian, quoted above. On marriage as on so much else, the Vatican likes to refer to a "constant and unchanging tradition", or to claim that it has "always taught". These claims are seldom supported by real evidence, and must be received with scepticism.

Then I found an impressive on-line history of marriage , in a lengthy outline by Stephen Schloesser, a Jesuit priest and professor of history, which he submitted to Massachusetts Senator Marian Walsh in 2004, during the turmoil in that state over gay marriage. Here are some extracts - the introduction, and (mostly) just a summary of the main paragraph headings:

Maybe the most frustrating thing I have heard in the recent debate is this claim that has become a mantra: that we are in the process of changing some allegedly unchanging 3,000-year-old institution called "marriage." Of course, the decision to grant marriage licenses would be a "change" in marriage practice - but"marriage," whatever that is, is always in the process of being changed. To pretend that its alteration is somehow a rupture in what is otherwise a three-thousand year continuity is just silly.

It seems helpful to me to recall what traditional marriage is: it is a community's legal arrangement in order to pass on property. In it, a male acquires (in the sense of owning and having sovereignty over) a female for the sake of reproducing other males who will then inherit property.In Roman law, the authority of the paterfamilias over his wife and children was absolute, even to the point of death. (Even during the enlightenment), Catholic reactionaries opposed the idea of women and children having independent rights and insisted that puissance paternelle (the absolute power of the father) was rooted in nature.

In Judaism, polygyny is found throughout the Old Testament until the inter-testamental period.In general, a survey of traditional Old Testament marriage makes the reader very grateful that we are not bound to follow its precedents or precepts.Early Christianity was really not into marriage. St Paul counseled his followers: "It is better not to marry." Augustine (following St. Paul) counsel ed marriage as a remedy for concupiscence - i.e., satisfying male sexual desire in a non-sinful way.

In general, during the early medieval Church, all sex is a problem, and all sex is equally a problem.Marriage, both in the Roman and the early medieval periods, was the moment that marked the passing of the rights over a woman from her father to her husband. She wasn't a person under the law.Serial polygyny was regularly practiced by early medieval kings famous for their Christian piety. Their marital practices did not trouble the Church. Concubinage was also widely practiced among the European elite, and this practice was unproblematic, even in the eleventh century. Divorce was also completely unproblematic until the twelfth century.

In the twelfth century, the idea of marriage as a "sacrament" - i.e., as something fundamentally regulated by the Church - was established along with priestly celibacy and primogeniture. The simultaneous appearance of these practices shows the way in which the preservation of property suddenly became an issue of great anxiety: celibacy prevented church property from passing on to priests' wives and children; primogeniture insured that property remain intact as it passed on to only the eldest son; and Church surveillance of marriages made sure that an authority larger than, say, the most powerful warrior / aristocratic families on the block, was overseeing the passing on of dowries - e.g., Eleanor's region of the Aquitaine. Women became the means of medieval corporate mergers: families consolidated power and property, both by means of dowries as well as by being the producers of male heirs.

Marriage as an "emotional unit" as opposed to an "economic unit" was largely an invention of the early nineteenth century. Bourgeois marriage was a classbound arrangement.Conversely, for the males, prostitution is seen as an integral part of the new arrangement of marriage.Divorce, finally legalized again in France in the 1880s, emancipated men but perhaps not women unless they had reserved some independent means. It too was part of the new emotional understanding of marriage, i.e., as something not arranged by parents but rather entered into partly because of emotional desires.

It is hardly coincidental: this is also the period during which the idea of "homosexuality" - and then, later, "heterosexuality" - was invented.Catholic ideas about marriage and sexuality are in constant conversation with the wider society/culture's evolving values and needs. As late as the Code of Canon Law of 1917, the official position continued to be depressingly materialist: the purpose of marriage was considered to be "procreation," while a secondary end was a "remedy for concupiscence."

This genuinely two-millennia-old view changed on New Year's Eve, 1930.(following the Lambeth Conference decision to approve contraception). The papal encyclical Casti Connubii introduced a fairly shocking innovation: one of marriage's "second ends" was the "unity" between the spouses.The 19th-c. invention of marriage as an "emotional unit" in which two persons came together not merely to procreate but in order to form a sphere of emotional support - a thoroughly modern meaning of marriage - was accepted by the papacy.

On October 29, 1951 came a second important innovation in Catholic views. In one of the most insignificant settings possible - i.e., not an encyclical or synod but rather an address to Italian midwives -Pius XII suggested that couples, as long as they did not use "artificial" contraception, could arrive at a moral decision to be sexually active in a way that did not lead to procreation.Between the years of approximately 1948 to 1963, the Catholic bishops of New England lobbied furiously against the legalization of contraception.

John Ford, a Jesuit moral theologian who was the most aggressive proponent of the anticontraception stance (and taught in Weston, Mass.) admitted letter that the "natural law" argument had failed; if the point of "natural law" arguments was to convince any "rational person" (unlike, e.g., Scripture, which would convince only a religious believer), and if all these rational persons were rejecting the Catholic position, then what did that say about the law's "natural" aspect? Eventually, the bishops abandoned this fight and made a distinction between public policy and personal religious practice.

To summarize: when one compares the 1917 Catholic view of marriage - "procreation" as a primary end, "a remedy for concupiscence" as a secondary end - with the 1969 view expressed in both the Vatican Council and encoded in canon law - "the community of the whole life" that includes both the "unbreakable compact between persons" as well as the "welfare of the children," one can see that the change in Catholic doctrine and law has been nothing short of astonishing.

The full piece is the most useful outline of marriage history and the church I have come across. I have selected here only the bits that refer specifically to the history of Christian marriage. There is much more on marriage in other cultures, and on the church and homosexuality. I strongly urge that you read it in full - or download or bookmark it for future reference, as I have done.

Yesterday I dipped into two books, and found ideas that amplified each other with powerful effect, especially in the current context of advances for marriage equality and the bishops' opposition. "Take Back the Word" (ed Robert Goss) is a compilation of writings on Scripture designed to take us as queer Christians beyond battles with the "texts of terror", to an approach more in keeping with what it should be, a source of inspiration and value in our lives. "Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body " (ed Gerard Loughlin) is a broader and more ambitious compilation, of writing on a range of dimensions of faith from a queer perspective.

Who was getting married?

In the introduction to his book, Loughlin reflects on the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, (John 2: 1 - 11) which we usually think of in terms of the transformation of water into wine. Immediately I thought of this as a wonderful alternative image for Goss's "Take Back the Word". It is one thing for us to move beyond a fear of Scripture to a point where it is the "water" of life: but how can we go beyond even that, to the "wine" of celebration? This, I thought, is what Elizabeth Stuart does in a short piece "Camping Around the Canon", which (as it happens) she ends with some thoughts on weddings. Stuart's point is that we need to be able to approach Scripture with laughter, which is too often absent from religious practice. After a concise exposition of the historical and theological justification for the approach, she offers just one illustration of what she means, discussing Ephesians, 5:21-33 ("Wives, submit to your husbands"), which is so often used at weddings, and which for women can so easily become a text of terror. Hearing it read at weddings, she says, left her "churning with anger". But an analysis by Gerard Loughlin changed her reaction from tragic to comic, as the "heteropatriarchal" readings are

undermined and washed away in the deeper waters of the Christian symbolic, for insofar as as women are members of the body, they too are called to be Christ to others; so that they too must also act as "groom" and "husband"; to the "bride" and "wife" of the other, whether it is to a man or woman. For it cannot be said that within the community only men are called to love as Christ does."

Loughlin's reading of the text had transformed it into a queer text. The very incongruity of this reading with the "original" reading is enough to stimulate laughter. I find it funny that this passage should be read so often and do solemnly at weddings, the great ceremony of heteropatriarchy.

I remember a comparable insight and laughter from my own experience. Once on retreat, I found myself reflecting on the familiar image of the Church as the bride of Christ, and realized that as a gay man, I was spared the oddity (for straight men) of imagining myself as "bride", and instead was able to picture myself in my meditation as "groom" of Christ - a meditation that became extremely powerful. Looking back on it later, I found satisfaction and humour in the realisation that my orientation had given me a unique advantage in my prayer.

This left me with a predisposed receptivity to Loughlin's main ideas concerning the wedding at Cana. Instead of considering the miracle of transformation, he asks instead, "Who is it that was married?". He answers the question in stages.

First, he points out that the story should be read as a parable, with distinct anticipation of the Last Supper, Passion and Resurrection. The wedding takes place on "the third day" (anticipating the resurrection) after He has talked with Nathanel (John 1:43 -51), and the transformation of water into wine anticipates the transformation of wine into His blood. In a liturgical setting, the Mass recalls these three days. So, it is a standard idea that symbolically, in the church's recollection of the story, we are all guests at the wedding, where Christ is marrying his Church. At one level closer to the literal, it is Christ marrying his disciples. Loughlin then goes on to discuss a fascinating more literal idea from the early and medieval church - that it was indeed Christ who was married - to John, the beloved disciple. This idea was articulated in the apocryphal Acts of John, in which it is said that John broke off his betrothals to a woman to "bind himself" to Jesus. This was apparently a common strand in some German medieval thinking, right up until the Reformation, and is visually illustrated in some surviving art. In a "Libellus for John the Evangelist", a painting of the wedding feast is said to feature a bearded Christ seated next to a beardless, androgynous John - whom, says Loughlin, he appears about to kiss. In the "Admont Codex" illustrated manuscript of St Anselm's "Prayers and Meditations", an illustration in two parts shows John's story. In one, John is seen leaving his female betrothed. In the companion piece, he is lying on the ground with this head on Jesus's breast, while Jesus himself is tenderly caressing his chin.

Is this tradition "true"? We cannot know. Like so much much else in Scripture, it is impossible to get through the mists produced by unfamiliar language, a different literary tradition, and remote historical /cultural context to get close to the literal "truth" behind the text. No matter. Even without accepting this idea literally, it is enough for me to know that it was once widely accepted in the mystical tradition, and to incorporate it into my reader response.

It is when Loughlin moves beyond the "meaning" of the text to its multiple ironies that the fun starts. This where, in sympathy with Elizabeth Stuart, I found myself quite literally laughing with Scripture. For if it is true that the consecration of Eucharistic wine into Christ's bloods is prefigured in the Cana transformation of water into wine, then we can see that in every Mass we are commemorating Christ's own wedding with His (male) disciples. Every Mass can be seen as a mystical gay wedding. That Mass is celebrated by a priest who has committed himself to celibacy, and so forswears procreation himself, but is expected to preach against gay marriage or others - because homosexual intercourse, being unable to procreate, is "intrinsically disordered". The priesthood in turn, is run by a a similarly celibate coterie in the Vatican which reproduces itself by recruitment not biological reproduction - and castigates the homosexual community for its own social, not biological reproduction.

The threat posed by gays and lesbians to family and society is often proclaimed by men - named "fathers"- who have vowed never to to beget children. The pope lives in a household of such men - a veritable palace of "eunuchs"for Christ - that reproduces itself by persuading others not to procreate. Why us the refusal of fecundity - the celibate lifestyle - not also a threat to family and society?

Writing in El Paso Times, Texan priest Fr Michael Rodriguez has launched an impassioned diatribe against all forms of legal recognition for same sex union. His ranting could easily be dismissed as the lunatic fringe, but as so many Catholic catechismophiles share his ridiculous claims and assumptions, I think it is worth responding in full. This is his key assertion:

“Remember: Every single Catholic, out of fidelity to charity and truth, has the absolute duty to oppose (1) the murder of unborn babies, and (2) any and all government attempts to legalize homosexual unions.”

Not content to invent a supposed moral obligation to oppose all forms of union, he goes even further:

Furthermore, a Catholic would be guilty of a most grievous sin of omission if he/she neglected to actively oppose the homosexual agenda, which thrives on deception and conceals its wicked horns under the guises of "equal rights," "tolerance," "who am I to judge?," etc.

What has he been smoking? He claims to base his words on a pastoral letter of the US bishops, which says, in part:

"It is not unjust to oppose legal recognition of same-sex unions, because marriage and same-sex unions are essentially different realities. The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it."

Now I disagree with the bishops’ stance, but it as least an understandable, coherent position. It’s a big leap, though, to go from “it is not unjust to oppose…”, to saying that there exists an “absolute duty to oppose …“

He attempts to soften his position by stating

I urge all of the Catholic faithful to treat homosexuals with love, understanding, and respect.

In doing so, I fear that by his own standards, he damns himself. He has already insisted that a Catholic “would be guilty of a most grievous sin of omission if he/she neglected to actively oppose the homosexual agenda”. I have never been clear precisely what this notorious “agenda” comprises, but as one who actively promotes it, I am certain that a central part of it is precisely a demand to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect. By urging this part of it, Fr Rodriguez is himself promoting a key component of our “agenda”, and by his own standards is thus committing a “grievous mortal sin”.

By his standards, he also condemns not just himself, but the majority of US and European lay Catholics, and also a significant proportion of the clergy and some bishops. How so? He claims that Catholics have an obligation to actively oppose the homosexual agenda. But numerous (US) research surveys have shown that a narrow majority of Catholics approve of same sex marriage and gay adoption, while more substantial majorities approve some form of legal recognition, and do not see same sex relationships as being morally wrong. Among the clergy, some individual priests and groups of priests have publicly supported gay marriage, and many more privately support either marriage or civil unions. In Portugal, when the legal process that led to marriage equality first began, the country’s bishops attempted to prevent its introduction by asking for the provision of civil unions instead. As civil unions are one form of legal recognition which the bishops were actively promoting, where they too guilty of the “grievous sin” Rodriguez describes?

In April this year, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schonborn, suggested that it is time for the church to reconsider its emphasis on “homosexual acts”, and instead consider the quality of the relationships. Since then three other bishops have said much the same thing. Are they too, condemned, for their “grievous sin”?

So, it would seem that Fr Rodriguez has taken it upon his own authority to condemn a huge proportion of the Catholic church for the grievous sin” of not actively opposing the homosexual agenda. Just what is he condemning us to? Read carefully, once again:

Any Catholic who supports homosexual acts is, by definition, committing a mortal sin, and placing himself/herself outside of communion with the Roman Catholic Church.”

He cannot be serious. This sounds like the same automatic excommunication recently invoked by the Bishop of Phoenix, and by the Vatican, in the cases of abortion and the “attempts” to ordain women. Is he really taking it on himself to proclaim the automatic excommunication of half the church, and more?

Let’s be clear on this: It is certainly the collective desire of the the Catholic bishops that we should oppose same sex unions, but it is by no means a moral obligation to do so. Nowhere in orthodox Catholic teaching is there anything that says there is any moral obligation to do everything the bishops urge, and there most certainly is not anything in the Catechism, in the creed, or in our baptismal vows that imposes such a supposed obligation.

On the contrary, one obligation that is stated very clearly in the teaching of the Church, is the obligation to follow one’s conscience. This was stated very clearly by one Fr Joseph Ratzinger, who insisted that conscience must take priority even over the demands of the pope.

When approaching gay marriage from the prism of sexual ethics, many people may well find that the dictates of conscience may lead them to oppose it. But sexual ethics are not the only, or even the most important, dimension of Church teaching. Many Catholics believe that teaching on social justice, and reaching out to the poor and the marginalized, is more important. Approaching marriage equality from the prism of social justice, many Catholics have been led by conscience to conclude that they must support it. This was certainly the case with some of the Argentinean senators who supported their family equality bill, and with “Catholics for Marriage equality in the US”.

So, in focussing exclusively on the approach from sexual ethics, Rodriguez is ignoring a huge chunk of orthodox catholic teaching – on the primacy of conscience, and on social justice. He is also ignoring the evidence of history.

By insisting on the spurious claim of an obligation to oppose all forms of legal recognition, he is including civil unions – but civil unions are just that, legal contracts to provide some protections to the partners in a relationship. They are not about sexual relationships – partners wanting a sexual relationship can (and do) have one without requiring a contract to authorize it. And liturgical recognition of same sex unions has a long tradition in the church, as amply demonstrated by both John Boswell and Alan Bray . To this day, there are echoes of these same –sex unions in the modern Mass, with the paired names of Felicity and Perpetua, Phillip and Bartholomew incorporated into the Eucharistic prayer – just as they were listed in the liturgies for same sex unions. (No, these were not “comparable” to modern marriage – but nor are modern civil unions, and nor were the the early heterosexual marriages comparable to modern marriage.) To the cynics who insist that in practice, civil unions are about sex, I reply that they need not be. In the early church, many saintly married couples committed themselves to voluntary virginity, even within marriage. In the nineteenth century, Cardinal John Newman, who will be beatified next month, was famed for the intensity of his (celibate) love for his dear friend Ambrose St John, even to the extent of insisting on being buried with him in a shared grave “for all eternity”. For any Catholic of homosexual orientation wishing to live strictly within orthodox teaching, which clearly states that the homosexual “condition” is not sinful, this celibate emotional bond might well make a fitting model of emotional friendship. If two such people chose to share their lives together, in chastity, is it in any way conceivable that there is a “moral obligation” to oppose legal protection for their relationship?

Finally, Rodriguez even ignores the evidence of the Gospels.

By His own words and actions, Jesus Christ clearly showed that He did not reject people in homosexual relationships. He demonstrated this by agreeing to heal the Roman centurion’s “servant” (“paidion”), in a context that would have strongly suggested a sexual relationship. This too, has an echo in the modern Mass – the prayer shortly before communion, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you….” is a close variant of the centurion’s reply when Jesus started off for his house “Lord.I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…”.

There is additional echo of gay unions in the Mass. Taken as a whole, theologian Gerard Loughlin has shown how it is an echo of the wedding at Cana, a wedding which in Catholic theology, is taken symbolically to represent Christ’s own wedding to his (male) disciples, and to the Church as a whole – including the men. There is even a tradition that the couple getting married were Jesus and His beloved disciple, John.

With three distinct echoes of gay relationships or unions, the Mass itself, the centrepiece of Catholic practice can be seen as promoting the “gay agenda” – or that part of it which seeks inclusion in Church.

Will Fr Rodriguez now cease celebrating the Mass?

To simplify: One would have to be ghastly morally decrepit to think that if 51 percent of Americans opine that rape is OK, then rape becomes, in effect, all right. Sure, the majority is politically capable of such a vote, but this could never make rape morally right.

This is typical of the garbage from the institutional Catholic Church, who blithely ignore their own history, which is full of recognized saints. ordained bishops and even popes who have had sex with men. For centuries (over half its history), the church recognized formal liturgical rites for church blessings of same sex unions, and also buried some same sex couples together in shared tombs, exactly as married couples. The Mass itself contains three echoes of gay unions - the healing of the Roman soldier's "paidion" - i.e., his sexual servant is recalled in the words, "Lord, I am not worthy"; same sex couples named in the Eucharistic Prayer; and the Mass itself is commemorates Christ's wedding to his Church (male and female). Theologian Gerald Loughlin has noted that one tradition was that the famous wedding was that of Christ to his "beloved disciple" John.